by Cass Morris
Neitin crouched down to rest her legs, rocking back and forth on her heels with her cloak wrapped tightly around her. Magic had always made her nervous, for all that her uncle practiced it, and had done all her life. Watching rituals set her heart to fluttering. It was all too uncertain, too far beyond the realm of daily life.
Sakarbik’s song put her in mind of her youth, in the days before she had gone up into the mendi to wed Ekialde, the promising second son of a chieftain who was friendly with her father. Baking bread and combing her sisters’ hair, those had been Neitin’s joys. Splashing in the river, welcoming the hunters back from the forest, and laughing with abandon, as she had not felt light-hearted enough to do in months.
‘Where did it go wrong?’
Not when she wed. That, too, had been utter joy and delight. She knew she had wed a warrior, of course, but at first, his raids had been the usual sort. No, things had only gone off course on another night like this one, when she sat in the dirt, watching as magic-men assembled and declared that her husband had been chosen by the gods to lead their people against the mighty force of Aven.
‘Would that the gods had left well enough alone. We might have been happy.’
Sakarbik’s invocation crooned softer, until it dwindled into silence. She stood still for a moment, then turned, startlingly swiftly, and crossed back to Neitin, who scrambled back to her feet. “Can you be brave?” Sakarbik demanded. “As brave as you need to be?”
“I—Yes.” What other answer, after all, was there?
“Good.” Fast as a striking snake, Sakarbik’s hand shot out and snatched the talisman from around Neitin’s throat—the one made of clay and Ekialde’s blood. She had never been comfortable wearing it, since it had come from Bailar’s hands, even if the blood had been freely given by her husband, not stolen from some unsuspecting soul. All the same, she gasped, clutching a hand to her chest. Her neck felt suspiciously light.
Sakarbik held her hand to the sky. “Endovelicos of many faces, Endovelicos who blesses my sight, here!” Her fist tightened with impossible strength, crushing the talisman. She cast it before her, the crumbling clay disappearing into the earth.
Sakarbik stepped back, side by side with Neitin, looking expectantly at the space between the trees. Neitin didn’t dare ask what she was waiting for.
An owl screeched, alarmingly close to them. Neitin found herself thinking with sympathy of whatever mouse or rabbit was destined to be a meal this night. A stiff breeze caught her from behind, pushing her cloak flat against her arms and calves. It carried the scent of fresh pine with it, and at that moment, the half-moon crested into visibility.
A mist began to appear in mid-air, condensing into swaying forms. The sight was, by now, all too familiar to Neitin. She sucked in her breath. Her mind wanted to run, to flee, but her feet refused to move.
Sakarbik’s hands clamped on her shoulders. “Don’t be afraid.”
“You’ve betrayed me!” Neitin hissed. “The fiends—”
A hard shake rattled her teeth. “Don’t be a fool, either! Look, little wife, little mother! What do your damn eyes tell you?”
Despite that her knees seemed to have turned to water, Neitin did as she was told. Her throat worked anxiously, but as she peered at the spirits hovering nearby, she did not feel the same anguished dread as when Bailar summoned his akdraugi. Nor, when she managed to look past her fear, did they have the same appearance.
These spirits had no more of a fixed form than the akdraugi, but instead of moving in sharp gusts and aping demonic faces, they were soft, rounded, bouncing gently in mid-air. One bobbed a little nearer her, then seemed to shy away again. They had a warmth to them, in their golden glow, but they did not feel comfortable. In gazing on them, Neitin experienced the breath-stopping awe that she had the first time her father had taken her to Olissippo, to see the Endless Ocean: a sense of her own smallness, her own insignificance, staring into the face of eternity. “What—What are they?”
“Besteki, little wife. Good spirits.” Another shake of her shoulders, though less violent this time. “It has taken me quite a bit of time and effort to work out how to invite them into the waking world, I don’t mind telling you.”
A helpless half-laugh bubbled out of Neitin, then she clapped a hand over her mouth, lest the spirits take offense.
“They cannot stay long,” Sakarbik went on. “There is too much tainted soil in these parts. They do not like places where the akdraugi have been.” This was the camp where Bailar and Ekialde had first tried summoning the demons, before they had moved closer to Toletum. Sakarbik had not been with them then, could not have known, but for her magic. “I think I may be able to persuade them to look after you and your child, and keep you from harm.” Sakarbik paused, drawing a long breath, then huffing it out through her nose. Neitin had a flash of insight: whatever Sakarbik was about to say, she knew it would not go over well. “But I do not think they will do so here.”
Neitin blinked over her shoulder at the Cossetan magic-woman. “What do you mean?”
“What I said. Here, where the akdraugi have run rampant, where they might be summoned up again at any time. Where so many men have taken blood in their names.” Her lip curled in disgust. “Where so many souls are rotting.”
The besteki flared slightly, as if in agreement with her words. Neitin’s thigh muscles trembled, but she swallowed and tried to stand up straighter, shrugging off Sakarbik’s hands. “What good will they do us, then, if they will not stay?”
“A great deal,” Sakarbik answered, “if you do not stay here, either.”
Neitin whipped about, strange though it felt to turn her back on the besteki, like disrespecting an honored chieftain. “What do you—” She bit her tongue before she could ask the same question again. “Where else is there to be?”
The yellow in Sakarbik’s hazel eyes was indiscernible in the darkness, but her exasperation was easy enough to perceive. “You have a father, I think? Far to the east?”
“I do.”
“You would be safe there? He would receive you and your son gladly?”
Neitin’s head nodded—without her permission, and as soon as she realized she was doing it, she shook herself fiercely. “I cannot believe this. You would have me abandon my husband, my people, in the middle of a war?”
“Your husband has polluted himself,” Sakarbik hissed. “He deserves abandonment.”
“He is coming to see sense!” Neitin protested.
“For how long? See it yourself, little wife! Without Bailar’s magic, the Aventan legions are cutting through our raiders like so much cheese. Already he is losing control of the Vettoni, while the Arevaci and Edetani stand fast with their scale-armored, scarlet-cloaked friends. When others begin to peel away—when even the men of other Lusetani villages question the wisdom of continuing to fight—how long will your husband resist Bailar’s sweet song, which might lure them back?”
Neitin’s lower lip quivered. She wanted, so much, to insist on Ekialde’s stalwartness. He was the erregerra, chosen of the gods, surely he had in him the strength to resist such temptation. Surely he would continue his fight on more honorable terms—or, better yet, give it up entirely and return home, as she had begged him to do for so long.
But she could not lie to herself so shamelessly, and so she said nothing.
Sakarbik seized Neitin’s chin and bent until they were nearly nose to nose. “If you stay here, little wife, you die. The stars are quite clear on this.”
She might have been lying. She was Cossetan; she had few reasons for honesty with Neitin, whatever oaths she had sworn.
“And Mati?” Neitin asked.
Sakarbik’s face reflected the glow from the besteki, warmer and brighter now, as if they had grown closer behind Neitin’s back. She did not dare turn to look but held Sakarbik’s unblinking gaze. “He may live, if you stay here,” Sa
karbik said, “but he will not grow into anything a mother would wish. Whatever monster Bailar has made of your husband, he shall do worse to your son. The stars have shown me a grotesque future for him, gore-soaked and foul.”
She might have been lying. But Neitin did not think so. The easiest lie would have been to promise Mati’s death. Only the truth could be more horrible. “And you? What do the stars tell you of yourself?”
Sakarbik’s head wagged side to side. “No, little wife. I do not ask for myself. I need not. I pledged myself to you, did I not? And so there is my course. If you go, I go, and perhaps we both live. If you stay here and die, then surely, I die, too, if not at Bailar’s knife, then under the lash in some foreign land.”
Neitin’s chest ached as though she had run a league, and the chill in the air had invaded her very bones. Her eyes stung with tears, quickly blinked away.
“Very well.” A harsh whisper was the best she could manage. “I will follow the besteki.”
Sakarbik released a hissing breath. Relief, Neitin realized. Had all of her anger and exasperation been cloaking fear? That thought, more than anything else, persuaded her that she had made the right choice.
“The besteki will give me a signal, when the time is right for us to leave,” she said. “But be ready. I think it will not be long.”
* * *
City of Aven
The Terentiae’s garden was wilder than that which one would find behind a usual Aventan domus. Its paths were simple packed earth, not pebbled or tiled, and wound irregular patterns around unpruned trees and shrubs. There were few flowers at this time of year, but the cypress trees remained verdant, and here and there, white and pink ginger plants lent color to the surroundings. A brazier had been placed in the midst of the miniature wilderness, and Terentilla and Alhena lay on a blanket beside it, sipping warm spiced wine and trading stories.
Alhena told herself she had come only to see if Tilla had learned anything new about the Discordian threat, or if she had had the chance to speak to her Vestal sister about it. Easier to tell herself that than to examine why the thought of spending time with Tilla set her pulse eagerly racing. They dispensed with the critical information swiftly, then spent the rest of the afternoon at leisure: talking about the latest comedy in the amphitheater, playing speedy rounds of calculi on a wooden board, and playing music. Alhena could handle a cithara passably well, and Tilla had skill on the panpipe. “Mama thinks it’s half a disgrace, me preferring such a common instrument,” she said, grinning, “but Papa thought it fitting for an Earth mage, so no one has tried to take it away from me.”
She trilled a few swift, lilting melodies, then, as Alhena flopped back onto a pillow, gazing up at the gray November sky, a low and lulling Ionian tune.
Alhena wasn’t sure how long she sat, listening to the music, before the world around her faded away and she found herself again surrounded by green hills. As had happened before, the land cracked at the surface and peeled away, exposing the tangle of bones beneath. The sight no longer startled her so much, but the rattling noise they made still jarred her senses, and the putrid reek of the fat glistening on them assaulted her nose. But she gritted her teeth, and this time, when the strange bronze doors appeared, she walked toward them without hesitation.
“Show me,” she demanded. The doors emanated the same strange heat as before, and the words appeared, burning on the door as though written in the light of hot coals. “Show me where you began.”
Dimly, she felt a press on her hand—her real hand, not the hand of her dream-body. And that gave her an idea.
Alhena reached out for the door. ‘It can’t hurt you, not really. It’s only a vision.’ Telling herself that did little good when she pressed her hand to the burning bronze. Pain seared through her, and her instinct was to jerk back, as one would from a hot cauldron, but she forced herself to keep contact with the doors. The words on them were swirling faster and faster now, and the pain scorched up her arm, making it feel as though her hand were on fire and the rest of her were about to catch. She screamed through the agony.
As from far away, she heard Tilla’s voice. “Alhena? Alhena, what’s the matter—”
Alhena had no idea if Tilla could hear her or not, but she refused to give up, for she could see cracks beginning to form in the door, beginning under her hand and spiderwebbing outward. “Show me! Show me what made you, show me who made you!”
All at once, the door shattered. Alhena had to close her eyes against the blaze of bronze light, and when she opened them again, the scene had changed.
Not now the endless country hills she had seen in her spring vision, but the seven hills of Aven itself. For a moment, she seemed to be hovering above them: then, she was in their midst, moving at the speed of dreams, gliding faster than true footsteps could ever carry her. She found herself in the middle of the Forum, but such as she had never seen it: empty, utterly empty. Even in the days of the Dictator, there had always been someone about—a public slave sweeping temple steps, an administrator running to his duties. To Alhena now, however, the Forum was cast in stark colors, as though it were about to storm, and not a soul but she transgressed there.
‘Proserpina, if you have given me this vision a-purpose, if you want me to follow this path so that I can help my sister . . . tell me which way to go.’
A long moment passed. Perhaps the goddess was not attending her devotee’s dreams at this moment. But then, a stiff breeze whipped up behind Alhena, catching at her garments and turning her slightly toward the right. ‘Right it is, then.’
Alhena let the wind guide her, impossibly fleet-footed, down the Via Sacra, between the Palatine and the Carinae. Then up, cutting north along the city wall. On the eastern side of the wall here, she knew, were the necropolis and lime pits. The wind nudged her back west again, however, before she reached the Volscian Gate. ‘Remember this, remember each crossroads,’ she told herself. ‘You must be able to find it again.’
When the wind abruptly stopped nudging her, Alhena found herself in front of a building made of bones.
A domus, she thought, with a high bronze door, but the walls were all gleaming white bone, interlocked and stacked twelve feet high. She heard whispers behind the door, the voices of the fiends. ‘We hunger, little prophetess, we hunger . . . so many souls in this city, so many meals . . .’
But Alhena paid them no heed. ‘I know where to find you now. I know how to catch you!’
Alhena shook herself out of the vision. It took a moment to return fully to her natural senses. Her limbs felt sluggish, and her vision blurred when first she tried to focus on Tilla’s brown face. Only then did she notice her friend’s panic. “Alhena!” Tilla gasped, hauling her to a sitting position. Her hands clasped Alhena’s face. “Are you—”
“I’m fine, Tilla, truly, I’m—”
“That was terrifying! You went all pale and still and cold and—Does that happen to you all the time? I was so—so—!”
Still dazed, it took Alhena a moment to realize that Tilla was kissing her cheeks in feverish relief. Then her brow, then her hair, then her cheeks again, and then—‘Proserpina help me’—her lips. No quick peck this time, but lingering softness. Even more astonishing, Alhena found herself returning the kiss. One of them sighed; Alhena wasn’t sure who. Tilla’s hands were callused, slightly rough as they stroked Alhena’s neck, but her mouth was soft and sweet and an utter revelation.
Alhena’s heart was pounding fit to burst from her chest. She had been kissed before, chaste and bloodless, before poor, dead Tarpeius had left on his campaign. That had been pleasant, she supposed, but this—this stoked a need somewhere inside Alhena that only magic had ever touched before, a secret heart-inside-her-heart that she had never known to look for. ‘Mercy, is this what my sisters have felt?’
That thought jolted her out of the sudden cloud of bliss. ‘My sisters—I have to tell them—�
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Alhena broke away from Terentilla, though not without regret. “Oh, Tilla, this is lovely, but we haven’t time.”
Tilla sat back on her heels, her head whipping about the garden. “You’re right. Gods. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just—You scared me so—But someone might—”
Alhena had never heard strong, surefooted Tilla sound so flustered. ‘Was she as surprised as I was?’ She would have to unravel that later. “That’s not what I mean.” Alhena clambered to her feet and put a hand down for Tilla. “We need to get to my sisters, right now.”
XLVI
The place reeked of Discordian magic. Vibia wondered if the others sensed it as she did. Latona, perhaps. To Vibia, they may as well have been walking into a charnel house. Splintered bones and rotting flesh, grave dirt and pyre ash, that was what this half-crumbled house smelled like.
Rubellia had been with Latona and Vibia when the two younger girls had come crashing into the Vitellian domus, hands clasped and babbling. Once the story came out, they had sent Tilla back home. The girl hadn’t wanted to go, but Rubellia had sensibly pointed out that they would need someone who knew where they had gone, in case something went wrong. Even then, Tilla had lingered until Alhena pressed her hand and whispered something in her ear.
Rubellia and Alhena, at least, seemed to have the sense to be afraid. Alhena, for all her determination to face the foe, looked like Iphigenia being led to the sacrificial altar, and Rubellia’s normally serene expression was drawn and pale, the apples of her cheeks hollow. Merula’s face was as mulishly impassive as ever. ‘And then there’s Latona.’ Fear hardly seemed to touch her when she had the bit between her teeth. It had been their salvation in the warehouse, but Vibia was wary of it nonetheless. Fear, in sensible amounts, led to caution. A lack of it often led to foolhardy behavior. ‘Foolhardy and ferocious. Like Sempronius.’ Vibia couldn’t decide whether to admire or disdain it, in either of them.
